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Creating Innovators: Why America's Education System Is Obsolete

America’s last competitive advantage — its ability to innovate — is at risk as a result of the country’s lackluster education system, according to research by Harvard Innovation Education Fellow Tony Wagner.

American schools educate to fill children with knowledge — instead they should be focusing on developing students’ innovation skills and motivation to succeed, he says:

“Today knowledge is ubiquitous, constantly changing, growing exponentially… Today knowledge is free. It’s like air, it’s like water. It’s become a commodity… There’s no competitive advantage today in knowing more than the person next to you. The world doesn’t care what you know. What the world cares about is what you can do with what you know.”

Knowledge that children are encouraged to soak up in American schools — the memorization of planets, state capitals, the Periodic Table of Elements — can only take students so far. But “skill and will” determine a child’s ability to think outside of the box, he says.

Over two year of research involving interviews with executives, college teachers, community leaders, and recent graduates, Wagner defined the skills needed for Americans to stay competitive in an increasingly globalized workforce. As lined out in his book, “The Global Achievement Gap,” that set of core competencies that every student must master before the end of high school is:

- Critical thinking and problem solving (the ability to ask the right questions)

“We’ve created an economy based on people spending money they do not have to buy things they may not need, threatening the planet in the process,” he says. “We have to transition from a consumer-driven economy to an innovation-driven economy.”

In an effort to discern teaching and parenting patterns, Wagner interviewed innovators in their 20s, followed by interviews with their parents and the influential teachers and mentors in the students’ lives. He found stunning similarities between the teaching styles and goals he encountered with these influential teachers at all levels of education and concludes, “The culture of schooling as we all know it is radically at odds with the culture of learning that produces innovators.” He identified five ways in which America’s education system is stunting innovation:

1. Individual achievement is the focus: Students spend a bulk of their time focusing on improving their GPAs — school is a competition among peers. “But innovation is a team sport,” says Wagner. “Yes, it requires some solitude and reflection, but fundamentally problems are too complex to innovate or solve by oneself.”

2. Specialization is celebrated and rewarded: High school curriculum is structured using Carnegie units, a system that is 125 years old, says Wagner. He says the director of talent at Google once told him, “If there’s one thing that educators need to understand, it’s that you can neither understand nor solve problems within the context and bright lines of subject content.” Wagner declares, “Learning to be an innovator is about learning to cross disciplinary boundaries and exploring problems and their solutions from multiple perspectives.”

3. Risk aversion is the norm: “We penalize mistakes,” says Wagner. “The whole challenge in schooling is to figure out what the teacher wants. And the teachers have to figure out what the superintendent wants or the state wants. It’s a compliance-driven, risk-averse culture.” Innovation, on the other hand, is grounded in taking risks and learning via trial and error. Educators could take a note from design firm IDEO with its mantra of “Fail early, fail often,” says Wagner. And at Stanford’s Institute of Design, he says they are considering ideas like, “We’re thinking F is the new A.” Without failure, there is no innovation.

4. Learning is profoundly passive: For 12 to 16 years, we learn to consume information while in school, says Wagner. He suspects that our schooling culture has actually turned us into the “good little consumers” that we are. Innovative learning cultures teach about creating, not consuming, he says.

5. Extrinsic incentives drive learning: “Carrots and sticks, As and Fs,” Wagner remarks. Young innovators are intrinsically motivated, he says. They aren’t interested in grading scales and petty reward systems. Parents and teachers can encourage innovative thinking by nurturing the curiosity and inquisitiveness of young people, Wagner says. As he describes it, it’s a pattern of “play to passion to purpose.” Parents of innovators encouraged their children to play in more exploratory ways, he says. “Fewer toys, more toys without batteries, more unstructured time in their day.” Those children grow up to find passions, not just academic achievement, he says. “And that passion matures to a profound sense of purpose. Every young person I interviewed wants to make a difference in the world, put a ding in the universe.”

“”We have to transition to an innovation-driven culture, an innovation-driven society,” says Wagner. “A consumer society is bankrupt — it’s not coming back. To do that, we’re going to have to work with young people — as parents, as teachers, as mentors, and as employers — in very different ways. They want to, you want to become innovators. And we as a country need the capacity to solve more different kinds of problems in more ways. It requires us to have a very different vision of education, of teaching and learning for the 21st century. It requires us to have a sense of urgency about the problem that needs to be solved.”

Wagner is not suggesting we change a few processes and update a few manuals. He says, “The system has become obsolete. It needs reinventing, not reforming.”

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Does anyone in the teachers union or the text book industry care about our children or our country’s future? If they did they would create a serious coalition of business, community and education. Step one. Create competition through the voucher system that doesn’t cost anything to do. That may create a sense of urgency to the “educators” to change the failed strategy of “teaching to test” and get serious about moving away from 18th century teaching methods.

In the past, innovation wasn’t necessarily learned at school. Kids would learn innovation at other places. People use to repair appliances, automobiles, etc. rather than replace or pay someone to repair. There was a whole generation of people who used items in other ways rather than just throw them in the trash when the its original purpose was used up. Did any one have grandparents who reused coffee cans, milk jugs, jars, plastic food containers, etc.? That is innovation. Learning skills and innovative thinking through creatively using materials on hand. Now instead of using old coffee cans to organize screws and parts in the workshop, we purchase items designed for organizing these items. So many of us have not had the experience of learning from a parent or grandparent how to creatively solve problems with materials on hand. We are taught to go to the store and purchase. The innovation problem is bigger than just the school system.

I agree that in the past people did make and mend rather than buy, but have you tried to repair anything made within the past 20 years? Between shoddy material and manufacturing methods aimed at ease of automated processing it is impossible to do anything but throw away and buy new. I will never get over my son’s experience at 6 years old in his school cafeteria–he spilled his milk, and immediately tried (as I had taught him) to clean up his mess. He was scolded by the cafeteria monitor, told “That’s someone else’s job”. Schools are actively discouraging good civil behavior, and the home-school movement is not motivated just by religious views but by a desire to escape a climate of bad values all ’round. Another example, when my father was in shop, he built a cutting board (lamination) that’s lasted for 80 years; when my son was in shop he made a checkers set (paint and saw). Why amusement rather than practical use? Bet you feel sorry for my kids, now, but I don’t carp at them. They’re just trying to fit into the society they’ve got, wasteful, irrational and irresponsible as it is. Point is, we get the society we’ve trained in school.

Recent 7th grade science quiz: “What language does the word ‘dandelion’ derive from?” “Latin.” Wrong–it’s old French. My daughter got that one “wrong” because she knew that French is derived from Latin. “What is distributed when you blow on a puffy dandelion?” “New life.” Wrong. It’s a seed, and it’s science class, so metaphors are banished. Kids who think outside of the box, toy with metaphor, see unusual connections between concepts, and think in pictures are not welcome in most schools. It takes a strong parent to keep them engaged in learning despite the Mickey Mouse rules and expectations and standardized tests, and keep them believing that their innovative skills will benefit them once they get out of the screwy school system.

This anecdote reminds me of a first grade spelling test I took, in which I misspelled “theater,” because I had seen it spelled in the Middle English “theatre” so often. I knew both were correct, so I just chose one. When it was deemed “wrong,” I petitioned, explaining my reasoning. Of course, it was still “wrong,” my teacher told me. It’s been nearly 20 years, and I still have a chip on my shoulder. I feel as if I was the one “wronged!”

Your daughter may have been correct, after all. etymonline.com says that “dandelion” is ultimately a translation of the medieval latin “dens leonis.” If you look at the Wikipedia entry, the same idea “tooth of a lion” is used in English, French, Dutch, German, Spanish, Portugese, Norwegian, and so on. Why would the same idea be used across all those countries? Maybe the answer is to think about who made it all across Europe? It was either the Romans or medieval monks back was the Catholic Church was the universal (catholic) church… and the monks wrote in Latin. The teacher will say, “That’s not the way we taught it in the course.” What matters is what’s right. What the teacher would be doing is teaching your child to be a “yes man,” or “yes person.” Tell the boss what the boss wants to hear, even if it means the company gets it wrong.

Could not agree more with you, Erica. This coming from an individual who has taught at the university level for 10+ years and cannot understand why we keep doing the same things over and over and expecting different results. I see what can happen when ideas and creativity are squashed; and, it does not take a license or degree to see what is happening globally and how our current system if latently behind. I think the only way we will climb back on top from our position of 26th in the world educationally is to work with like minded individuals who are not adverse to change and have their eyes wide open — it is happening. Thanks for this thought provoking article — I am open to change.

While I would agree, the liberal agenda that dominates our school system has failed miserably to educate, i’d also argue this deluded tripe offered as a solution is more of the same. What isn’t being factored in is the fact the average IQ in America is a pitiful 100. 80 + 90 + 100 + 140 averages 102.5, and therein 3 out of 4 American’s can barely grasp how a toaster works. In this public education has been dumb down to accomodate the majority just as TV news, and newspapers have done. Those who can learn to lead and innovate are held back to accomodate the majority that does not have the ability to lead or innovate, and never will possess. What Junior advocates is the same old worn out long ago debunked tripe liberals have been pushing for decades. Junior is merely proposing communism Part Two claiming his version is new and improved. The issue he brings isn’t innovation, but like a typical control freak argues we’re not living down to his standards and innovating the “right” things. Junior’s problem isn’t innovation, it’s consumerism, and individual liberty. When I was in 2nd grade the principal told my mother that if I asked any more questions in class I would be expelled from school. From this meeting my mother took me straight to the public library, and walked me through each section, explaining to me what I could find in them. She then taught me how to use a card catalog, and when we came home with my new library card in hand granted me more freedom. From that day on I could go anywhere I wanted within 1 mile of home anytime i wanted. The library was 1 mile. She explained to me adults are never going to answer my questions, and if I want answers, look it up. If I didn’t get the answers it’s my fault. Education is a personal responsibility. What Junior fails to grasp is the fact you cannot remove human nature from public education, and therein the real education of public schools is learning to overcome assholes for teachers taking out their personal problems in class, which prepares one in life for the assholes you will work for punching a clock. The real education is on the school yard. HKU taught me what books with a liberal indoctrination agenda ever could. It’s at HKU I leanred to innovate. To be Frank, if Wagner doesn’t like the way I earn money and spend it, Junior can KMA.

This kind of article is based upon superficial stats and authors that need to get out more, particularly to other countries. The “best” in most industrialised countries is still many years ahead of the BRICS and light years ahead of the rest. Has the author been to any of these countries where there are societies of groupthink, learning by rote and antiquated learning tools? The problem is that we have too many lazy politicians, academics and journalists. Quality, not quantity will always be most important, see Persia, Greece, Rome, British Empire…….